About Melissa
Melissa Reighn is a licensed mental health counselor in New York with 15 years of clinical experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, and mood concerns such as bipolar disorder. Melissa approaches therapy in a straightforward, respectful way and aims to make the first steps toward change feel manageable.
She believes each person knows their life best and brings their own strengths to the work.
Background and approach
Sessions start by listening to the story and identifying what the client wants to change. From there she helps set small, realistic goals and tries approaches that fit how the person prefers to work. Her background includes supporting people through parenting strain, low self-esteem, attention differences such as ADHD, and eating concerns.
Melissa also has experience with aging and geriatric issues, caregiver stress, chronic pain and illness, and substance-related problems. She has worked with people facing relationship breakdown, domestic violence, and immigration-related stress. Melissa uses several practical therapy methods to address trauma, difficult memories, and everyday stress.
She helps clients build coping skills, shift unhelpful thinking, and try new behaviors that match their values. Work in sessions is collaborative and paced to what the client can manage. Appointments are offered in formats that fit modern life, including video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text messaging.
Her approach aims to make therapy usable for busy schedules while focusing on concrete steps toward feeling better.
Approaches and online care that fit your life
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying what matters to you and taking small steps toward those values while learning to live with difficult thoughts and feelings. It can help when anxiety, low mood, or life transitions make it hard to move forward.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect and uses practical exercises to change patterns that keep problems going. It is useful for stress, anxiety, and mood-related concerns where learning new skills can reduce distress.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is used to work with painful memories and trauma by processing upsetting experiences in a focused way to reduce their emotional impact.
Choosing the right approach is a team effort. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn't helped before. Together they try methods that match the person’s comfort and needs, then adjust the plan over time.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video lets people see facial cues and use exercises that benefit from visual interaction. Phone sessions use less bandwidth and can be a simpler check-in. Live chat and text messaging work well for quick check-ins, brief problem-solving, or when writing out thoughts helps the process. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule and to keep progress moving between appointments.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Parenting issues
Also works with
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating disorders
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Intellectual disability
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English